Tuesday, February 16

I wanted to check my blog dashboard quickly with the few minutes left in my 7th hour planning period but somehow forgot that Blogspot, and all things bloggy, is summarily blocked on campus. So, this post is really to remind me to blog about this topic more extensively ASAP.

Monday, February 15

I know one of Dr. C's assignments is to film an "older" person learning new media, but I thought you might get a kick out of a video from the other end of the spectrum. Here is my 3½-year-old son, Spencer, demonstrating his prowess on the iPhone. (Disclaimer: Everything he learned about using it was from observation and imitation. We didn't sit him down for lessons!)

The study reported in this article might explain why so many of us in this class haven't done much blogging in the past (my emphases):

"A new study has found that young people are losing interest in long-form blogging, as their communication habits have become increasingly brief, and mobile."

"The study . . . found that 14 percent of Internet youths, ages 12 to 17, now say they blog, compared with just over a quarter who did so in 2006. And only about half in that age group say they comment on friends' blogs, down from three-quarters who did so four years ago. Pew found a similar drop in blogging among 18- to 29-year-olds."

"The Pew survey found that nearly three-quarters of 12- to 17-year-olds who have access to the Internet use social networking sites, such as Facebook. That compares with 55 percent four years ago."

"All of that rings true to Sarah Rondeau, a freshman at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. 'It's a matter of typing quickly. People these days don't find reading that fun,' the 18-year-old student says."

Text BABY to 511411 to receive timely updates and tips regarding your forthcoming and newborn baby. What does this say about the state of American parenting when (1) we can operate our cell phones better than we can care for our children? (2) we no longer have the strong intergenerational familial relationships that have served for millennia as the primary source of information and assistance in child raising? (3) we no longer have personal relationships with our health care providers, leaving us instead to turn to an anonymous, national database for obstetrical and pediatric advice?

I received a healthy textbook allowance for this semester, so I bought a bunch of the books. Here's a ranked list of the ones I'd most like to read (and why):

#1: McChesney's Communication Revolution. This looks like a good foundational text, including "a concise history of media studies," to quote the jacket flap, addressing real-life applications and implications, and seeming to be not so technical (either computer-wise or communications-wise)as to alienate a lit major.

#3: Litman's Digital Copyright. Admittedly, this doesn't look like the most riveting selection, but as a fledgling journalism teacher and student media adviser, this would probably be a good one for me to read.

#4: Manovich's The Language of New Media. This looks like a very thorough overview of the field, but it also seems to be more technically oriented than McChesney and Jenkins.

#5: Gee's What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. I am most definitely not a gamer, so this falls down my list, but being a high school teacher, I suspect it would teach me a lot about my students, especially the guys, so that raises it from closer to the bottom of my list.

#6: First Person. Getting way too technical for my liking, but at least it's shorter than...

#7: Bruns's Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond. Way too technical for my liking, really long, and small print!

About Me

A graduate of Cascia Hall Preparatory School and NSU (English/humanities), I am an M.A. candidate in English (literature). This summer, I began additional graduate studies in school administration. Before returning to Cascia as a member of the faculty in 2006, I taught at the summer programs of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth, worked in student affairs at Villanova University and Oklahoma State University, and served as an intern teaching assistant at NSU. I am certified by the State of Oklahoma to teach English, journalism, speech, and debate in the 6th through 12th grades, and I currently teach sophomore Composition, junior American Experience, and Journalism at Cascia. Additionally, I coach the school's Academic Bowl teams and advise the student newspaper. I am a member of the Modern Language Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, the Journalism Education Association, and Sigma Tau Delta (the international English honor society) and have presented my research at the Sigma Tau Delta International Conference and the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. (professional bio adapted from my TeacherWeb)